What I Was Actually Buying
Every time a curriculum box arrived on my doorstep, I felt it.
That specific, temporary, completely sincere feeling of: this is the one.
I wasn't buying curriculum.
I was buying certainty.
The feeling — brief and always temporary — that I had figured it out. That the doubt could quiet down for a while because I had done something about it. That the box on the doorstep was proof of a mother who was on top of this. Who had researched and decided and acted.
The boxes didn't give me certainty. They gave me hope. And hope has a shelf life. By the time we were two weeks into whatever had arrived, the hope would start to curdle. My son wasn't responding the way the reviews said children responded. Maybe the problem was something else. Maybe I needed to find it.
And then I would start looking again.
New box. New confirmation email. This is the one.
The fear underneath all of it was never about the curriculum. It was about me. Whether I was the right person for this. Whether the choice I had made was going to be okay. Whether I was enough for what I had taken on.
No box was going to answer that. However well-reviewed, however carefully chosen, however hopefully ordered.
I still use curriculum. I pick it up when it serves what I know about my son and I put it down when it doesn't. I don't wait for it to tell me which is which anymore. I already know.
The last box I ordered arrived and I opened it and I thought:
I hope this is useful.
Not: I hope this is the answer.
That's the whole shift. Small in words. Everything in practice.
✦
A question I've been sitting with: What would I stop looking for in a box if I trusted that I already know enough about my child to find the answer myself?
Love,
Claire